> I just noticed (when I came to use it) that CVS isn't in the standard
> source distribution. Is there any particular reason ? If not, can it
> be rolled in ?
> 
> And while on the subject, is there any chance perl could be made a/the
> standard scripting language ? Like sh/csh are great but perl is so must
> more powerful (and yes, bigger)...
> 
> -- 
> Peter Galbavy				e-mail: P.Galbavy@wonderland.org

The primary reason that you will find applications, and some utilities
are absent from the NetBSD distribution is that it is primarily an OS
distribution, not an entire user environment.

CSRG (the BSD people) distributed primarily the core OS and utilities
and left the cute/cool/user application/application-specific stuff to
contrib, and even contrib itself was relatively small.

The argument goes as follows:

The OS is the enabling technology, and really the crown jewel.  There
are some utility programs which provide the core of an user
environment (mechanism), but with little specialization (policy).

What I use NetBSD for, will be completely different from what you or
some other person uses it for.  There are people using NetBSD in
development, research, and education.  We don't want to load the
system with these environmental decisions, rather leave them to the
user, or third-party packager.

Thus we are generally not sympathetic to adding every new and neat
utility, and application to the distribution, because it means making
environment decisions for our users, and means more maintenance work
for us on non-core stuff.

The two tools you mentioned are good tools, but I wouldn't describe
them as essential core utilities.  We are great fans of CVS but it is
not a required tool.  Perl even more so, as we have no perl scripts
currently in use.  If your point is that we should include an adduser
script, then I agree, but we can easily find a sh based solution.

We are generally supportive of people gathering ports of
applications/utlities to NetBSD, but it is our hope that those ports
will become unnecessary, as more and more applications compile out of
the box.

If people want to put together distributions with more targeted user
environments, then go for it.  We are providing the enabling
technology, without distribution restrictions (except the gnu shit),
so you can do whatever you want.

later,
Adam Glass



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